Close The Door
by Little-Delia
Summary: Summary: Janet has never embraced her gift, or anything about her life for that matter. The only thing mind reading has gotten her is severe, debilitating headaches. However, after a fateful visit to her psychologist, Ray Mercer, her gift may save a life.
1. Chapter 1

Closing The Door

Disclaimer: Janet is mine. So is Nathan, but he's barely anything to claim ownership of. All the other characters belong to their respective owners. Don't sue me, because you won't get anything.

Set during/after the events of episode 113 "The Journey

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It was 9 am when I got to Ray Mercer's office. Nathan, the university receptionist, was clearly surprised to see me rush into the lobby this early in the week. He was under the impression that I must be relapsing back into some kind of drug dependency and needed to cling to Ray like a life raft once again. This was always Nathan's constant worry for me whenever I would run in unexpectedly. Not that he actually had the guts to ask me whether or not I was going to be alright. Just like he hadn't had the guts to ask me out like he'd wanted to when we first met after he'd started working the desk. The boy was a total coward when it came to confrontation. Little did he know that drugs were probably the one and only problem that I'd never had in my entire life.

God! Did I really look that desperate today? Nathan's perception of me wasn't one that was necessarily accurate. Sure I probably looked like crap to the well groomed, suburban raised twenty year old sitting behind the desk but was I really drug addict material? Just because I'd woken up with a headache that made migraines look as soft and gentle as newborn kittens and hadn't had the physical energy to make myself glamorous this morning, shouldn't mean that I would automatically look like death warmed over. I mused about this thought, taking a seat in one of the cushioned waiting chairs. Getting lost in thought was apparently a very bad idea because my head throbbed with uncontrollable fervor.

A lot of people, when I'm forced to tell them about my headaches, question them. Did I have too much to drink the night before? Am I going to die from a brain aneurism? Do I like to fake my condition to get sympathy? Often they, like Nathan, won't openly ask me about what caused them or what I do to myself to make them as incapacitating as they are. And sometimes they just don't care. The ones that don't give a hoot make my life easier, because when people don't care there's no pressure to come up with excuses. Of course, they don't know that what goes on in my head is completely different then what goes on in theirs. If they did maybe they'd care a little bit more about my headaches, since they are technically the ones causing them.

If someone were to imagine turning on a static filled radio talk show while sticking their head inside of an occupied beehive, they would come mighty close to what I hear. Only instead of just buzzing, one bee would be complaining about her husband leaving her for the much younger bee next door, while another would be bitching that his neighbor stole some of his honey. That person would be hearing all of the bees screaming about random things in their lives _all at once_. Minus, a swarm of angry bees stinging my face, I experience the equivalent of that scenario in my head on a daily basis. Now tell my why I have headaches.

It took a lot of strength to resist putting my head between my knees to practice some deep breathing exercises, but I kept a calm facade just long enough to give Nathan a fairly confident order. "Call up to Ray's office and tell him I'm here."

Nathan didn't question my order, or ask me wether or not I had an appointment, you know the annoying things receptionists are told to say to dissuade students from harassing the professors with pointless drivel. He got on the phone immediately. Thank the lord that I was the only one in the lobby, or else Nathan's conversation would've been mixed into a maddening cacophony of other people noise. He told the person on the other line, Ray I assumed, that Janet Matthusen was in the waiting room. I had to give him a hand, he sure knew how to convey when something was an emergency. That's probably why Ray had recommended him for the job in the first place.

The wait was fairly short, because no more then five minutes later Ray made his way through the hallway and over to the corner chair where I was hunched.

"Again Janet?" He looked irritated, like my visit had somehow disturbed some important work he was doing. Odd, Ray wasn't the type to get irritated when patients were involved.

_"This is a bad time. A few things have come up."_

Ray also wasn't one to turn away any of his former patients just because they had chosen the wrong time to come and see him. His newfound "I'm far to busy" spiel was not something I would've expected to come out of his mouth, or in this case his head. Under any other circumstances, I would've gone home the second I had seen the burden I was putting on him, but pain has a way of making you more self-centered then usual.

Despite his disconcerting behavior, I sneered and nodded my head to answer his spoken question. Nodding was another bad thing to do as it rattled my already crowded head some more. "Believe me, when the time comes where I can go a month without these goddamn headaches I will be a happy woman. But until that time comes, you're just going to have to put up with me and the schedule that my head puts me on."

He extended a hand, and helped me from my chair. I could let my guard down with Ray, which helped me relax a bit. Relaxing as much as possible is always a good thing when you're head is screaming bloody murder under the weight of other people's thoughts.

We made our way to his office, where he sat me down on the chair by his desk and looked into my eyes.

"Your pupils are constricted." He stated. Well, no shit sherlock.

"Yeah, and Toronto is cold in the winter." I closed my eyes, and began massaging my temples in the vain hope that it would ease some of the pain.

Ray couldn't keep his opinions to himself today.

_"I think you should go to the hospital and get a head scan."_

I couldn't help but snort, despite my head wanting to split itself into two afterwards. "Yeah, and tell them what exactly? That I'm afraid I have a tumor because I've lost control of my ability to read people's minds and all the whining is giving me headaches? That'd go over real well with the medical professionals."

"Secrecy is of the utmost importance naturally but Janet, you have to do something about this if the headaches are becoming incapacitating." Ray had just given me "the tone". He was trying to calm me down so that I would see his logic. "This may have nothing to do with your gift and everything to do with your health."

_"Or at the very least a head scan might give us some answers as to why your ability is progressing so violently."_

"Okay Ray, thinking directly at me isn't helping." I opened my eyes and glared up at him.

"I'm sorry." Ray backed away slightly, though he knew physical distance didn't really help. "But ....

_"I'm worried about the fact you may have something wrong with you that could possibly kill you. This isn't something to be stubborn about."_

He was sitting in a chair across from me, pity written all over his face. Pity may be calming to Ray's other patients but I like to think of myself as more of an independent thinker. I don't like it when people feel sorry for me. Especially not after I've seen into their heads. Most people only show pity when they want to feel better about themselves, when they want to think that their miserable lives aren't so bad so they look to people who have it worse.

But Ray's pity is different. When he gives me pity, very naturally he wants to empathize with my plight of being telepathic and understand my pain. Even though he's probably the one shrink in the world who treats telepathy like it exists and is the only person in my life who hasn't thought I was batshit insane, Ray can't possibly know what it's like to hear things that no one in their right mind would want to hear. He knew me well enough that pity for my "gift" (more like a curse) was an insult.

Then why am I seeing a shrink if I can't stand being pitied? Because I don't have anyone else who will believe in what I can do. Ray is an open mind who would do everything in his power to help me, at least he normally would. Everyone needs that in their lives, a friend to care about them. Ray was as close to a friend as I could ever get.

With that in mind, he should've known the "better safe then sorry" speech doesn't work with me anymore. I've had enough head scans in my life to know that they never show anything useful on someone like me.

"Hey, I'm not just being stubborn about the brain scan!" I growled through gritted teeth. "Do you think I _like_ waking up every morning with a pounding headache and the knowledge that my next door neighbor jacks off to Barbara Streisand when his wife is at work?"

He didn't seem to take any offense to my comment, (I have a tendency to be too crass when it comes to not offending people) but maintained his look of concern. "No, I can't imagine that you would wish that on yourself. But I'm wondering why you're so resistant to possibly discovering whatever is going wrong."

"Well, of course I want to fix whatever it is that's wrong with me." No one could blame me for being frustrated. I used to be able to tune the voices out, force them back into a corner of my brain where I could choose to hear them when I wanted to. Now I was an exposed wire, my ability to insulate myself from them shot to hell for no apparent reason. I had been trying for weeks to stuff them back down, but none of the exercises Ray had taught me to develop years ago seemed to work anymore. If I couldn't stop them then I was going to lose my mind and insanity was not an option I was willing to embrace at the moment.

"But I don't think I could bare if I got my hopes up, only for there not be a way to cure this problem of mine."

What he said next drove me up the wall. "If there's an emotional trigger that brought down the barrier in your mind then I can help you find a way to rebuild it but if there is something physically wrong then this could be beyond my abilities to fix."

I wanted to either smack him over the head or start crying. I hadn't done anything emotionally overwhelming that would've pushed me over my psychological precipice far enough to make my mind reading freak out on me. I hadn't witnessed any murders, or almost been hit by a car. I didn't lose my job, or my house. I could pay my bills without the stress of being in debt up to my eyeballs. My life was normal. Well, as normal as life could be considering my unusual condition.

"I haven't done anything to set this off! One day it was just like someone turned up the volume and I couldn't turn it back down again."

"Then it's time to go to the hospital. We absolutely won't mention the telepathy aspect but tell them about the headaches." He was getting impatient with me, or maybe just with me being there. If I wasn't already in enough sensory overload I could've asked him what was going on and have gotten the answers as to what had crawled up his butt.

"And what if it's like all the other times I've gotten my head scanned? I've spent most of my life in hospitals having doctors poke at me, taking pictures of my head. You know as well as I do what good that did me."

"I remember."

I shuddered a bit, my past was an uncomfortable thing for me to think about. Let's just say I envy people who don't remember much about their childhoods. "You know why I can't willingly go through that again."

"Yes, and I want to help you regain control of your gift." Ray was really good at placating people, seeing as that had been his job for longer then I had been alive. He always made you feel like someone was on your side, even if the rest of the world was against you. "But this is something I have never seen before and I'm not a medical doctor. "

Not the answer one wants to hear when someone is your last hope for a comfortable, if somewhat secretive, lifestyle. It didn't help that I was also losing my patience with his almost dismissive attitude, like he had bigger things to attend to. This was not the Ray Mercer I had known for years. I could tell, without prying into his head, that something was seriously wrong if he was in such a state of disregard for everything. Now, not only was I worried that I may possibly be suffering from some incurable ailment that I couldn't explain to doctors but I was also desperate for answers as to why my mentor would be turning away from me when I needed his guidance the most.

It was desperation that fueled my question. "You must know of _someone_ who's abilities have been progressing similar to mine. Anyone whose range has been increasing suddenly or maybe is having difficulty drowning out thoughts?"

This time he frowned, something very out of character for him when dealing with patients. I had definitely hit a nerve by mentioning others. He was protective of the identities of the other telepaths, which I suppose are very small in number, because if anyone with nefarious intentions found someone with these kinds of gifts we'd be hunted down. Under those circumstances, I can't blame him for being careful. But that doesn't mean I don't resent him a bit for not introducing me to the others. Even though Ray has never openly admitted their existence to me, I knew deep down that he had dealt with other telepaths. The knowledge he had about my gifts was knowledge that one only gained from experience.

"Even if I could Janet," He replied with what seemed to me like regret or maybe even guilt, "I'm afraid that anyone I sent you to wouldn't be of much help to your situation right now."

You have to love irony. It has a penchant for sneaking up and biting you in the ass. Here I am, a telepath who could hear people thinking about what they were having for breakfast from miles away, yet there was no one who could help me keep my brain from melting. And my only source of help and understanding had just told me that he probably couldn't help me either, while he happened to be preoccupied by something that had him on edge.

I was alone, and not for the first time mind you.

"Great." I rested my head in my hands. "Just great."

We sat there for a few minutes. I would say that there was nothing but a punctuated, cliche silence between us, but that would be a lie. I've rarely ever experienced true silence where someone's thoughts weren't creeping in. Right now, the security guard on the opposite side of the building was thinking about the fight he had with his wife. The female student walking down the hallway was getting ready to cheat on her midterms. The store owner two blocks away was worried about the kid in aisle five who looked like he was stashing stolen goods in his backpack. Ray, however, was worried about a matter unrelated to my visit, a name from his mind popping into the muddle of thoughts swirling around me.

_"I hope Toby found her..."_

"Ray." I brought my head up to look at him, my eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Who's Toby?"

"That's not something I feel comfortable discussing right now."

Okay, when the man chose to evade he could be completely aggravating. "Well, you're thinking more about him then you are of the fact that my head might explode at any moment. And you clearly have something to get off your chest." Or out of your ass.

_"I should've sent her away today. The break in was only the beginning." _

Break in? Someone had broken into his office? So this was why he seemed so irritated with my visit.

"Jesus! A break in?" I said, trying not to seem so prying. "Did anything go missing?"

Boy was I sorry that I asked that question.

A bunch of thoughts popped from his head before he could filter them and before I had time to put up my flimsy barrier. The human brain rarely has need to censor itself on the fly, so it often pops out thoughts before it has any idea of how to organize them. The images I got were jumbled. File folders missing from Ray's filing cabinet, patient files. A man's voice asking why the files were just sitting in a filing cabinet. An old man in a hospital gown and cuts on his face. A video of a guy with a buzz cut taking the now missing patient folders. A woman, who had been shot laying, in a hospital room. These were all places, names and faces that I didn't and could not expect to recognize. _And the one that I did._

I knew him or, more accurately, I'd seen him. The guy was pretty good looking by my standards. It was hard not to remember the eyes. Bright blue, the kind of blue that made you take a step back and stare into them. Eyes that contrasted with his jet black hair. Three years ago, I'd seen him coming out of Ray's office and ever since then I would see him on campus off and on. I thought he had been a student, or maybe even an intern. He'd left an impression on me because he never seemed to broadcast any thoughts whenever I would pass him on my way to see Ray, like he'd shut a door on his mind that I couldn't open. This must be Toby. He certainly seemed to be the center of all the worries I was seeing.

"Dammit!" A sudden jolt of pain inside my skull startled me out of his head, and back into the present. I'd pushed my limits with my pain and now it was pushing back, hard.

Gasping, I put my forehead down to my knees, slowly clenching my fingers into tight fists. My only concern now was shutting the door. I had to close my mind and stop any more thoughts from entering. Anymore would be too much of an assault on my senses to handle right now. One thing, though, was horribly clear. These thoughts should've been kept where they belonged.... inside Ray Mercer's head.

The world quieted a bit, the voices fading down enough that my ears no longer seemed like they were ringing.

"Ray, what have you gotten yourself into?" I knew the implications of what I had just seen and it was clear that I was now involved in something I shouldn't have been. Story of my life.

Not only that, but they were making me sick to my stomach by the weight that they put on my brain. Little did I know how much what I had just seen would change my life.

Ray's hand was now squeezing my arm, holding me so I wouldn't fall out of my chair. "Are you alright Janet?"

I was panting, trying to regain my equilibrium from the episode that had almost knocked on my ass. "Do I look alright to you?"

"How much did you see?" His tone worried me, like anything I had learned would mean I'd have someone coming after me within the hour.

"I saw Toby." Taking a few deep breaths, clenching my hands so tight that my nails dug into my palms, didn't stop the thoughts but they were somewhat manageable now. Close the door, Janet. Close the goddamn door. "And the woman who got shot."

"Oh my god." I felt Ray try to pull me from the chair, and grabbed the tissue box from his desk. "You're going to the hospital Janet. Right now."

His change of subject was so sudden and confusing that I tried to pull away from him. "What are you talking about?"

When he pushed a tissue under my nose and I saw red stain the white paper I understood. The choice to go to the hospital wasn't mine to make anymore.

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Okay, this is my first fanfic for The Listener. I got this concept one day at work, and it turned into this first chapter. Before I knew it, it was five pages long and a new story had emerged. I had some problems with getting Ray's character right, because we know very little about him from the series, so keep in mind that I tried my best. If any of you think it's good, then I'll probably write this until I run out of ideas for where to take Janet. Write a review and tell me what you think, or should I say, if you think it's worth it.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I finally got a break from school, and I was able to finish Chapter 2. I hope to have Chapter 3 up and running soon, but I've learned never to make promises I might not be able to keep. So the next chapter will be up when its up. I hope you enjoy reading. :-)

I spent the time that it took the medics to get me loaded into the back of the ambulance wondering how much torture my little emergency trip was going to turn into. I knew if I mentioned the true cause of my headaches that any competent medical professional would lock me up for observation. "Mind reading" sits pretty high up there on the list of how to tell if someone belongs in the looney bin. It's right between thinking you're Jesus and believing the government is spying on you through radio transmitters in your fillings. Being made to feel like a loon irritated me to no end because I knew for a fact that I WASN'T mentally ill. And regardless of my own personal belief, it's how I felt every time I took a step through a set of hospital doors.

I dwelt on my dislike for the antiseptic hallways of the purgatory I would soon be enjoying. Trying to focus my energy on maintaining my own petulance was better than dwelling on the thoughts of the paramedic who was in the back of the ambulance with me. The pain wasn't as bad in the ambulance as it would've been everywhere else in Toronto. It was probably because the ambulance was moving and not giving my brain enough time to lock onto the mental static from the buildings around me. Unfortunately, my attempts at drowning out the thoughts of the paramedics failed miserably.

The red-headed paramedic, who sat in the back of the truck with me, was making an effort to take a medical history. The problem was that he was also trying to ignore the fact that his female partner had once again turned him down for a night out. His pitiful fantasies would've made me nauseous, even if my head wasn't already spinning, because they reminded me of really bad porn. I did feel kind of bad for him though. He'd been turned down by the only girl he'd ever spent a lot of time with. Being a member of the smallest minority on earth, loneliness was the one human emotion that I understood completely. I would've been tempted to give him some woman advise had I not mentally smacked myself first.

'Am I _really_ emphasizing with the guy who is thinking about his romance issues while he was supposed to be treating the sick and afflicted?' I thought to myself bitterly.

The sick and afflicted that, for the moment, consisted of me and I had enough to deal with without worrying about if some down on his luck paramedic got laid or not. Where had listening to other people's loneliness gotten me anyway? I'll tell you where it had gotten me! In the back of an ambulance, with the headache to end all headaches, and me holding a sheet of gauze to my nose so that blood wouldn't get everywhere.

Quite frankly, I was getting pretty sick and tired of trying to fight foreign thoughts out of my head when it was clear that I wasn't doing a very good job in the first place. It takes an unbelievable amount of mental stamina to block out an entire world of loud, obnoxious people. Ever try focusing on a single blinking light bulb while your watching a light show? It's distracting to say the least. The psychic static never really ends. When I learned I could master my ability, I thought I had finally found a way to get rid of the distractions. There had been hope for some measure of quiet and normalcy. But as I lay on the gurney, it hit me that maybe I was never meant to keep my little slice of peace. Maybe I'd done something to piss the universe off and it was returning the favor.

The defeatist attitude of mine only got worse as the thoughts of everyone in the ambulance continued on, screaming in my head and tearing at my nerves.

_"Man, I bet she's a hellcat. A girl that tough has to be. Wish she hadn't had something else to do last night, could've tried her out myself."_

The red-head went on with the history, completely unaware that I knew where his attention was really focused–on getting into his partner's pants. I was so glad that I hadn't allowed myself to feel too sorry for him. The guy was a dog.

"Are you having pain anywhere else besides your head?" he asked, impatience in his voice. We'd already gotten past the humdrum 'how long have you had these headaches?' question before he'd let his mind start wandering, so I only had a few more monotonous questions to live through.

Well, there was a massive pain in my ass but I didn't think it was relevant to anything medical. "No."

"Did you take any medications or other substances this morning?" He said, wanting me to admit that I had snorted something that would've made my nose gush. _"Bet she got high this weekend. Coke heads are such a waste of time."_

Cocaine, what an easy and straightforward diagnosis. Part of me wished that I actually took drugs recreationally. It would've made for a believable excuse for how much of a freak I was. I could've pranced around in a blissful fog saying whatever I wanted about what people were thinking. No one would've ever taken me seriously because I would've been totally stoned. Or at the very least, the drugs would've been a good diversion from the fact that I was cursed. As you can probably tell, I'd considered the possibility before but the 'just say no' lecture won in the end.

"Nope." I muttered, hiding my distaste for his internal monologue. If only people knew what I could hear. They'd at least try to exercise a smidgen of self-restraint when it came to mentally insulting people.

_"Big surprise." _He put a pulsometer on my finger, and watched as the machine _beep beep beeped_ to measure how fast my heart was going. "You're heart rate is elevated. Do you have a history of high blood pressure or anxiety?"

Anxiety? Oh you betcha. "It was my shrink who called you guys, what does that tell you?"

"Are you taking anything for the anxiety?" Was this guy ever hung up on drugs. Now he was convinced that I was snorting because I thought cocaine was medicinal. In his mind, not only was I a druggy but I was an idiot too.

I glared at him over the piece of gauze I was holding to my face, half tempted to flip him the bird. Quickly, I reconsidered that idea because people tend to get suspicious when you respond to their thoughts rather then their words. "I think I would've told you that when you asked if I had taken anything this morning."

The guy scowled at me, sensing the daggers of hostility that I was throwing at him, and continued with the interrogation. "Any head trauma in the past week?"

"Shouldn't you have asked this question before you loaded me onto the big white short bus?" I growled.

Evidently, my tone had gotten under his skin because his cheeks turned a nice shade of red, making his face look like it was going to morph into a giant radish. "I'm just doing my job, Miss Matthusen. Can you just answer the question?"

Well, since he'd asked oh so nicely. "No trauma unless I somehow missed a hard, blunt object hitting me. Wait a second! Do you think the anvil that mysteriously fell on my head Monday could've had something to do with it?"

"Hey Gauthier!" He called up to his partner, putting his clipboard down in his legs with a thwap. "We got an E.T.A on St. Luke's?" _"I want this girl off my hands so I can treat people who actually appreciate being saved."_

The female paramedic up front, who thankfully was quite focused on her task of getting me to the Emergency Room, shouted over the truck noise. "About five minutes. How's she doing?"

I raised my eyebrow and smirked, daring him to make a smart ass comment about me. His problem was that he was more concerned about impressing Gauthier and less about considering who he was taking on.

"She needs a new personality." _"Cranky druggy bitch."_

So he wanted to have a go at the mind reader huh? What a stupid, stupid move. The guy had been mentally accusing me of questionable moral character the entire ride, all the while thinking perverted thoughts about his partner. So maybe I let my headache get the better of me. Maybe I could've controlled my temper a little bit more than I did. But I'd be damned if I was going to let him get away with calling me names, even if he hadn't exactly called me them to my face.

"Hey, Ron Howard, I know I'm a bitch. It has something to do with the fact that there's a jackhammer pounding the inside of my skull. And let me tell you a little secret..." I paused, building suspense, like I was actually going to impart some valuable knowledge. Then I went straight for the jugular.

"The reason you're not getting any play is because grown women can tell when you're picturing them naked." I looked in the direction of the drivers seat to emphasize who I was talking about.

A loud guffaw came from the front seat. Gauthier apparently appreciated my jab. "She got you Henderson!"

Much to my satisfaction, Henderson turned a vibrant shade of crimson. "Shut up Gauthier!"

Henderson went quiet and stayed that way for the rest of the ride, sufficiently taught a lesson about not aggravating patients who were already having the worst day of their lives. The only time he looked up from his paperwork was when he tried to shine a penlight into my eye–which I didn't allow him to do because bright lights tend to be mortal enemies of people with headaches.

Even though I could still hear him cursing up a storm in his head, I appreciated the semi-silence that came from his lack of yammering. I appreciated it because I knew it would eventually come to an abrupt and painful end. When we reached the hospital, I would hear every thought from every single brain in the building. Not to mention all of the telephones, intercoms, beeping of heart rate monitors, crying children, and hundreds of people having conversations all at the same time. There would be no protection against it, no bracing myself for the impact. Something terrible was about to happen to me, something that I could see coming, and I knew it was going to sting.

The ambulance slowed down and I closed my eyes, dreading the inevitable. It reminded me of when I was six and broke my arm after falling off a playground swing. I'd waited in the emergency room for two hours, while pain ran up and down my arm. I knew, even at the ripe old age of six, that the arm would have to be cracked back into place. Cracking of any kind sounded terrible to me, so every moment I waited for the doctor to come I could feel the dread sinking into the pit of my stomach. The problem with my analogy was that what happened after the ambulance stopped hurt a whole hell of a lot more then setting a broken arm.

The thoughts came at me so fast that I worried they would blow parts of my skull to the other end of Toronto. I could hear each one individually as they bounced around my head, playing hopscotch on my brain tissue.

_"They don't pay me enough to do the billings and clean the bedpans."_

_"Where the heck is that intern? He's an hour late for rounds."_

_"Mommy, please don't let the doctor poke me again."_

_"Good thing we have socialized health care. All these tests would be costing me a fortune."_

_"Spiral fracture of the arm, contusion to the left eye. This woman is being beaten by her husband."_

_"I swear I cannot read his hand writing. Does that say hydrocodone or hydroxyzine?"_

_"Oh Manny, how could you leave me..."_

_"The bullet barely missed her aorta."_

_"Another MRI? How long until they find this tumor?"_

Just when I thought my cranium couldn't hold anymore people, something hit me..._hard_.

_"TOBY! TOBY! HELP ME!" _I heard a woman scream.

My head exploded, splattering big juicy globs of frontal lobe all over the back of the ambulance–or at least it felt that way. The strength of the thought made my whole body tense in pain, squeezing out a shocked yelp from my lungs. This thought hadn't just been words, or pictures that I experienced from a distance. It was as if the woman was inside my head screaming, and showing me IMAX quality video of what she was thinking. A car wreck, her head hitting the steering wheel as another car purposefully smashed into her. Snow fell all around, the cold blistering her skin. A bald man, the same bald man I had seen in Ray's thoughts, pulled her from the vehicle. This woman, where ever she was, was nowhere near the hospital and she was in serious trouble. I could feel her fear.

_"OTTAWA! THEY'RE TAKING ME TO OTTAWA! I DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME LEFT!"_

When the image went black, evaporating into nothing, a new pain filled my head. Sharp and unrelenting, it shot through my skull like white hot pokers being shoved into my brain. I couldn't open my eyes, or uncurl from the ball that my body had shrunken into. Every muscle contorted and I could hear myself wailing, but couldn't stop the sound from leaving my mouth. The agony was unlike anything I'd ever felt, dwarfing every other ache, pain and discomfort I'd ever had into nothing.

"Get her inside!" I could barely hear Henderson yell over the ringing in my ears and the thoughts of the people in the hospital. "Can you hear me Miss Matthusen?"

"I need Ray!" I shouted, gripping the sides of my head as I writhed. Not only was I in pain but I was scared shitless. Ray was the only person I could trust to get me through whatever was happening to me. It was completely clear that I couldn't handle this problem on my own, not without someone holding my hand and telling me that things were going to be okay. Even if they were lies, Ray would say those words if it meant dissolving my panic.

"What happened?" I heard Gauthier yell. "You said she was stable."

"She was fine!" Henderson snapped, pissed that she had basically accused him of some kind of negligence. "She just grabbed her head and started screaming!"

When they started lifting the gurney out of the truck, I felt my stomach fold in on itself, twisting and turning like a bag of live worms. Apparently, with all the pain and blood loss, my body didn't have the patience to deal with all the jerking that the paramedics were putting me through. I knew what was coming next, and couldn't hold it back. Hot, bitter vomit crept up my throat and spewed over the side of the gurney, thick chunks of my breakfast smacking onto the ground. I was sure that it didn't resemble anything remotely like the bacon and eggs I had had that morning, but I surprisingly cared very little about the puking. I was more concerned about the pain and getting ahold of Ray.

"Someone get me Ray Mercer." I groaned, my body tightening back into a protective ball. I was suddenly pissed at the paramedics for not letting Ray ride with me to the hospital.

"Mercer?" Gauthier asked. "The shrink?" _"What does she want her shrink for? He's not even a real doctor."_

"Yes." By now I was panting out my answers through clenched teeth. The pain would keep growing as long as the thoughts kept stampeding through my head. "You _need_ to find him."

Suddenly, there was a loud uproar of voices and the sound of glass doors whooshing open. I was slammed from every angle by hands grabbing and tugging at me, invading my rather large personal bubble. I didn't open my eyes, because I really didn't need to. I knew I was being pushed into the ER, and that the hands jostling me were attached to nurses. However, the fact that the hands belonged to nurses didn't stop me from wanting to smack them away like the mosquitos they were.

"What do we have?" a deep, masculine voice asked with authority.

"Janet Matthusen, age 21. History of chronic headaches going back four weeks. Her shrink called an ambulance when her nose started bleeding uncontrollably." Henderson reported. "She was stable during transport, but she started convulsing as we unloaded her. She also vomited all over the back of our truck."

In the midst of my agony, I'd forgotten all about the nose bleed that had brought me here. Blood would've been all over my clothes and face, making me look like I had gone toe-to-toe with Sam Langford in a boxing match. Though the pain was still my biggest concern, I now began to worry what would happen if the bleeding didn't stop. Was it really blood leaking out through my nostrils, or was it melted brain? Could brains actually melt? People weren't supposed to do what I could do, so the realm of medical possibilities seemed to be a much larger place for me. Who knew how much damage all those years of "hearing" things had done.

"Did she mention any head trauma?" the doctor asked.

This time it was Gauthier who answered. "No trauma. She also denied any drug use."

"Miss Matthusen," I heard the doctor say. "My name is Dr. Langley. Do you know where you are?" _"She could be hemorrhaging. Sounds like a brain tumor. We'll have to prep her for an MRI."_

The words "brain tumor" sent a chill of panic up my back. I had known that it was a possibility, but hearing that the doc thought I had a tumor gave reality a chance to slap me across the face. My life was quickly turning into an even bigger nightmare than it already was.

Part of me wanted to say I was in hell but I couldn't seem to handle my usual dose of sarcasm. Instead, I obediently groaned the word "Hospital."

"What city are we in?"

Oh how I loved cognition tests, so delightfully mundane. They were even more irritating when you were trying not scream. "Toronto."

"Are you experiencing any ringing in your ears or sensitivity to sound?" Finally, a question that was worth answering.

I thought that voices would certainly count, so I nodded 'yes' before adding, "Where's Ray?"

"Who's Ray?" Langley asked.

Again it was Gauthier who answered. "He's the shrink who made the call. Dr. Ray ..."

"Mercer." Langley cut her off quickly. "I've seen him around here a few times. Is he on his way?"

"Yeah," a nurse somewhere answered, "He just arrived in the waiting room asking for her."

Langley had a grim tone in his voice when he asked, "Any family to contact?" _"Just in case this thing is what I think it is."_

I was about to tell him, rather assertively, not to bother with contacting my family but then I heard a thought that made my stomach drop. I heard it before I felt a set of ice cold hands try to wrench my fingers away from my face.

_"Penlight." _I assumed this thought had come from a nurse next to me. What was with these people and their stupid penlights?

"No!" I snapped, holding my balled fists tightly against the side of my head. They were going to check my pupils, and that was something I couldn't allow them to do–even if it meant biting off someone's fingers in the process. I couldn't take anymore pain, and adding a penlight to the mix sounded like a very, VERY bad idea.

"We have to check your pupils." the nurse cooed, as she tried to reposition me again.

This time I snarled at her, smacking at her blindly in an attempt to slap the penlight out of her hand. "No!"

Apparently, there more nurses surrounding me then I thought. Several sets of hands came flying at me, roughly pulling my fists away from my face. Another set came from above and held my head straight ahead. I squirmed, trying to get a few good hits in before I had to endure the trauma of having a mini-spotlight flashed in my face. Unfortunately, my body wasn't strong enough to fight them off. When I felt two fingers touch the skin of my eyelids, my stomach jumped into my rib cage.

"Fuck me!" I swore unintentionally. Everyone around me, from what I could hear, thought I was being overdramatic. I'll be the first to admit that if I had been a bystander watching the whole ordeal, I would've thought that I was being overdramatic too. And I would've been wrong. The light might as well have been the sun, because it certainly burned like it. Surges of pain shot across my skull like a lighting, and for a split second I thought I would lose consciousness. When I realized I wasn't going to blackout, I had to actively fight the need to hurl my already nonexistent stomach contents all over the emergency room floor.

"She hasn't blown a pupil." The nurse said, as she let go of my eyelids.

I wanted to fly up from the gurney and give the woman a good, firm pop to the mouth. If I hadn't felt like my head was being put through a wood chipper I would've. Or at the very least I could've told her to shove her penlight where the sun doesn't shine. But, knowing the way hospitals treated patients who picked on nurses, I let her assault on my retinas slide. Rather then starting a fight, I curled back into my protective ball and closed my eyes. Being put in restraints just didn't really appeal to me. What _did_ appeal to me was making the screaming pain in my head stop, and that meant...

"I hate to bother you guys while your trying to work," I said over the commotion, trying to keep my teeth from clenching, "But can you give me something for this pain? It's kinda kicking my ass."

"Push .15 of morphine." Langley ordered. "_I don't want her writhing around during the MRI."_

I thanked him silently, even though his reasons behind doping me were more out of annoyance than sympathy. The dose of morphine would knock me out cold. I didn't have much of a tolerance for painkillers. When the needle bit into my arm, a warm, woozy feeling filled my head. It worked fast, easing the pain as it trickled through my body. Finally, with a sigh of relief, I slipped into a blissful fog of silence.

Review please :-)


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